West Coast

Timing Is Everything

The West Coast has walks for every level, but the single biggest thing you can do to improve them is sort your tides and your timing. At Punakaiki, the Pancake Rocks are best at high tide when the blowholes are doing their thing, while the Truman Track opens up properly at low tide. Get those two right and you're in for a treat. Get them wrong and you're just another person in a crowd eating a sandwich.

Pick Your Level

There's a solid spread here from quick roadside stops to genuine grunts. The Blue Pools on the Haast Pass are worth it despite the crowds, and the swim in that glacial water is something else. Around Franz Josef, the Roberts Point Track gives the best free close-up glacier views on the coast. Further north, the Oparara Arch near Karamea is my pick for the off-the-beaten-track crowd, if your van can handle the 14km of winding road to get there. And don't sleep on the smaller stuff either. The Roaring Billy Falls gets a fraction of the traffic of Thunder Creek and is genuinely worth the stop.

The Trig walk at Okarito is a cracker early morning or at sunset, and the birdlife around there has been noticeably on the up. The Monro Beach walk south of Fox is worth planning around if you're here between August and mid-January, timed for dusk at low tide for the Fiordland Crested penguins. Pack sandfly repellent for all of these. They're not joking around on the West Coast.